You are a harried supervisor with papers piled high on your desk. Along with managing and rewarding your team—and helping with their technical work—you try to get them the training they need. Evaluating that training is part of your job too, but you find this frustrating. Any evaluation done at the end of training is only rarely passed on to you. Even then, it does not consider whether the training had any effect in the workplace.

Good news—there’s something you can do. Use 10- minute training evaluation with each team member to get the job done. Here’s how it works:

The first five minutes. Have a chat about the training soon after your team member returns. Ask these four questions:

1. What did you think of the training? This gives your team members an unprompted opportunity to evaluate their experience. Listen carefully to understand what was good and not-so-good.

2. How much could you get from just the manual? Sometimes the essentials of training—especially technical training—don’t require class attendance. Knowing this can save resources in the future.

3. How much did you already know? Some training addresses mostly basic or introductory information that those on the job already know.

4. What will you do differently on the job? Your team member has the newly-learned information in mind and is in a good position to predict how it can be used. Jot some notes from this conversation on the top half of a sheet of paper or a generated form. Your notes from the fourth question will help you decide when to plan your second five minutes.

The second five minutes. Have another chat after your team member has had the time and opportunity to put the training to use. Ask these two questions:

1. How did you use what you learned? Listen carefully to learn about barriers that prevented use of the training and for any misinformation or mismatch with your work setting.

2. Would you go again or do something else? Your team member is in a good position to see how well the training supports the job and perhaps suggest a better alternative.

Take more notes on the bottom half of your paper. Use your judgment about the team’s work habits and environment to add your own perspective as to whether this training would be useful for other team members. As you talk to others about these training episodes, be sure to refer to these notes and emphasize the perspective of your other team members. A folder of these notes will help when your agency “rolls up” data to meet its yearly training evaluation responsibilities under the recent revision of 5 CFR 410. This training evaluation can help the voice from a single training instance to be heard—and make a difference.

Reprinted from Issues of Merit, a publication of the Office of Policy and Evaluation, U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.